Auction bridge card game rules

Bridge is a card game consisting of 4 players with 2 opposing pairs. Each player is referred to by a cardinal point of the compass — North, East, South and West. North and South are team mates as are East and West.

Team mates sit opposite each other at the table. Each player is dealt 13 cards from a deck of 52 cards, dealt in a clockwise rotation, where the hand starts to the left of the dealer, making the deal equal. Players should sort their cards by suit; spades highest , hearts, diamonds and clubs lowest and rank; A, K, Q, J, 10, 9, 8, 7, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2. Please note, in terms of suits, the ranking is present in bidding only, where in play all of the suits are equal. Contract Bridge is another name for the game Bridge.

The addition of the word contract refers to the contract or bid players makes after the deal. A bid must also include the suit. During the auction process, partners share information about their cards with each other. Afterwards, all players should again have 5 cards.

The player seated left of the winning bidder will lead to the first trick. He may play any card from his hand. All other players must follow the suit that is led, if possible, or play any other card if not possible with a few exceptions; see below. The highest trump played will win the trick, or if no trump is played, the highest ranking card of the suit led wins.

The player who wins the trick will lead the next trick, and so on, until all tricks are captured. If you have a lower trump, you must play it.

At the end of each hand, score is taken. Each trick caught is worth 5 points. The highest trump played is also 5 points. If the bidding team does not succeed, the amount bid is scored as negative points deducted. If the bidding team captures all 5 tricks, they receive double score, 60 points. Defending Team Score : The defending team will always score the amount of points they captured, irrespective of what the bidding team scores. We win if we score better than other players managed with our cards, and lose if we score worse.

For this comparison to be fair, it is necessary that each group of players who play the same deal should start from the same position. Therefore it is not practicable to play rubbers, where the scores carried forward from deal to deal affect the tactical situation. Instead, each deal is scored in its own right, and does not affect the scores for subsequent ones. The concept of vulnerability is retained, but on each deal the vulnerability is preassigned. An almost essential piece of apparatus for playing Duplicate Bridge is a set of duplicate boards , and a pack of cards for each board.

Each board contains four pockets marked North, East, South and West in which the cards for the four players are stored.

Each board also carries a number to identify it, and has marks showing which of the players is dealer and whether each team is vulnerable or not. The marking of the boards is as follows:. Before the boards are played the cards are shuffled, dealt and placed in the pockets. Traditionally, this was done by a neutral person or by a player in the presence at least one opponent.

Nowadays the cards are often dealt by computer, with the aim of ensuring perfect randomness while enabling a record of each deal to be kept. A simple method is for the computer to produce a printed hand record or a set of curtain cards , specifying which cards should be in each hand on each board; a neutral person then has to construct the hands and put them in the pockets. Since the early 21st century, however, computer controlled dealing machines have become widely available.

These machines physically sort the playing cards and place them in the boards ready to be played. Early models did this with the aid of a bar code printed on each card; these are gradually being superseded by machines that use optical character recognition OCR to identify and deal standard playing-cards.

When about to play a board, the players take their cards from the appropriate pockets, check to see that they have 13 each, and then bid as usual. The mark on the board showing the 'dealer' in practice just indicates which player is to begin the bidding.

The opening lead is always made face down, as explained above , to give the leader's partner an opportunity to ask questions about the bidding before the led card is shown. During the play, the cards are not played in the centre of the table but in front of the players.

At the end of each trick, all four players turn their played card face down. The cards played by each player are overlapped, with the longer axis of the card pointing to the winners of the trick i. That way you can easily see how many tricks you have won. Also, if the cards are kept in order, any dispute about revokes or tricks won or lost can be settled by reconstructing the play.

At the end of the play, each player's cards are gathered up and replaced in the correct pocket, ready for the next time the board is to be played. When this method of play is used, dummy is expected to remain at the table if at all possible, and declarer then always calls dummy's cards rather than pulling them from the dummy. You may ask to look at the cards played to a trick by the other players as long as your own card is face up.

Once you have turned your card face down, you no longer have the right to see any of the other cards played to that trick. Unless you are dummy, you are still allowed to peek at your own played card, without exposing it , until the lead is made to the next trick. Each board is marked to show whether both sides, one side or neither side is vulnerable for that board.

You still need to score at least points for tricks bid and made to make a game , but on each board, both sides start with zero points towards games - there are no 'part scores' carried forward. The rest of the scores are the same as in Rubber Bridge, except that there are no bonuses for honours in Duplicate Bridge. So for example:. These scores are of course not yet the final scores. They have yet to be compared with the scores achieved by other people who have played the same cards as us on this board.

The method of doing this comparison varies according to what kind of duplicate is being played. Perhaps the commonest types are teams of four with international matchpoint IMP scoring, and matchpointed pairs. A match can be played between two teams of four - eight players in all.

Each team consists of two partnerships, and you need two tables - preferably in separate rooms so that players cannot overhear events at the other table. Before starting the players agree how many boards will be played - this could be 24, 32, 48 or more, depending on the seriousness of the match and the time available.

A 24 board match should easily be completed within three hours. Shorter matches, sometimes of as few as 6 boards, are commonly played if the match is part of a larger tournament. Longer matches are normally split into two or more segments or stanzas after each of which there may be a break and an opportunity to change seats.

Call the tables 1 and 2 and the teams A and B. Then the pairs of team A sit North-South at table 1 and East-West at table 2, and the pairs of team B occupy the other seats. Take a convenient number of boards - say boards 1 to 12 - and give the first 6 to table 1 and the other 6 to table 2.

As each table finishes their 6 boards they are passed to the other table to be replayed. Since none of the players should go near the other table before everyone has played all 12 boards, it is best if the boards are transferred from table to table by a neutral referee; if none is available, the boards that have been played once can be left in a place away from both tables for collection by the players from the other table.

When all 12 boards have been played at both tables, it is a convenient time to compare scores and maybe enjoy some refreshments. It may be agreed that for the next segment, the two pairs of one of the teams should swap places. This gives each pair the opportunity to play against both pairs of the opposing team.

The procedure about the number of segments in a match and the choice of seats for each segment may be laid down by the organiser of the event - otherwise it needs to be agreed between the team captains. Each player should have a score card to record the score on each board. The card has a row for each board. The beginning of North's card from table 1, when completed, might look like this:.

The 'By' column shows who was declarer. The score is recorded from the player's point of view North's in the example - so when West goes down in 5 diamonds it is positive. The IMPs can only be filled in when this card is compared with one of the cards from the other room. Some players prefer to enter the number of over- or undertricks in the "Tricks" column rather than the total number of tricks taken.

Suppose that our team mate East on table 2 has a card like this:. So in the example, on the first board the difference between the two tables was 30 against us, and we lose 1 IMP. On the second board we lose 3 IMPs.

Although on table 1 our North-South pair defeated West's 5 diamonds, on table 2 with the same cards our East-West pair allowed North to play and make 4 hearts. On board 3, where we bid the small slam on table 2, while they stopped in game on table 1, we gain 13 IMPs for a point difference.

On board 4 both Norths made 9 tricks in hearts, but we gain 6 IMPs because our North-South pair just bid 2 hearts rather than 4. Overall we are 15 IMPs ahead on those four boards. After each scoring interval, the captains of the teams should check that the scores agree.

The purpose of every player keeping score is to make it easier for errors to be traced and corrected. At the end of the match, the result is the difference in IMPs between the teams. Sometimes there is then a further conversion of this margin into a match result, in which some fixed number of victory points is apportioned between the teams. There is no single standard conversion table, but here is an example table for a 24 board match:.

In the example, if we were still 15 IMPs ahead having played 24 boards, using this table we would win the match If the match was part of some larger competition, such as a league, then we would score 13 victory points and our opponents would score 7.

There are also events in which many teams of four compete. There are various ways of organising these. At any particular time in such an event you will be playing a part of a match against some other team, and at some time your team-mates will play the other cards of the same boards against the other half of that same team. The scores are eventually compared to find how many IMPs you won or lost against that team. Another way of scoring teams of four is akin to the matchpoint scoring used in pairs see below.

On each board you simply win, tie, or lose depending on whether you score better, worse or the same as the other team. This method is known as board-a-match or BAM in America; in Britain it is usually called point-a-board. This is the game most usually played in Bridge clubs, and there are also many tournaments organised this way.

As implied by the name, it is played between a number of fixed partnerships or pairs. For a pairs event you need a minimum of three tables 6 pairs, 12 players , and it works better with more players - say 10 tables 40 players or more.

With a very large number of players say more than 70 it is usual to split the tournament into two or more separate sections.

Generally you play two or three boards at a table - this is called a round - and then one or both pairs move to another table and play other boards against other opponents. The movement will be organised by the director in such a way that no one ever plays boards they have played before, or against opponents they have played before. Traditionally, the score for each hand was recorded to a travelling scoresheet or traveller , which was kept in the board, folded so that previous scores could not be read, either in a special pocket provided for this purpose, or in the North pocket on top of North's cards.

None of the players may look at this sheet before the board has been played. North is then responsible for entering the result and showing the completed sheet to East-West to check that it has been done correctly. Each pair has a number to identify them, and this must also be entered on the scoresheet, to show whose result it is.

North is also responsible for the movement of the boards - checking at the start of the round that the correct boards are being played and passing them on at the end of the round. At the end of the whole session, each scoresheet will contain the results of all the pairs who have played that board. The scoresheets are then collected by the organisers and the scores compared.

The usual method of scoring is in matchpoints. Each pair is awarded 2 matchpoints for each pair who scored worse than them on that board, and 1 matchpoint for each pair who scored equally.

In North America it is customary to count just one matchpoint for each pair scoring worse than you on a board, and half a matchpoint for those that are equal. This obviously makes no difference to the final ranking order or percentages scored by the pairs. Then the total matchpoints scored by each pair over all the boards are calculated. This is generally converted to a percentage for each pair of the points they scored compared to the theoretical maximum.

This gives a fair comparison between pairs who have played different numbers of boards. The winners are the pair with the highest percentage. There may be prizes for 1st, 2nd, 3rd place, etc.

Another, less usual way of scoring pairs is with a version of the IMP scoring used for team matches see above. There are two kinds of IMP pair games: your score may be IMPed against every other pair that played the same hands, or against a form of average of the scores of all the pairs who played the hand.

Sometimes the movement is such that the North-South pairs stay put and the East-West pairs remain East-West throughout. In this case the results for the East-West pairs and the North-South pairs are separate, and there are two winning pairs. To enable all the pairs to be placed in a single ranking order, the last round is sometimes played with an arrow switch.

This means that the players who were previously North-South play the East-West cards for that round and vice versa.